Things are beginning to pick up as we approach the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in June.  Here is an update of new developments since my last post about this a couple of weeks ago:

The number of candidates for moderator have now increased to three.  Back in November National Capital Presbytery endorsed the Rev. Bill Teng as a moderator candidate. ( Presbyterian News Service Article) At the time of my last post San Francisco Presbytery had just endorsed the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow as a candidate on January 15.  Rev. Reyes-Chow quickly announced the news by starting his moderatorial campaign blog and the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) caught up with Web 2.0 with their news story last Thursday.  Rev. Reyes-Chow is the founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church that the news story describes as a “multi-cultural, multi-generational New Church Development of San Francisco Presbytery that makes extensive use of cyberspace to communicate and conduct its ministry.”  The news story also describes Bruce as “a highly sought-after speaker.”  The fact that the news story makes significant use of his blog as a source is noteworthy.

On January 18, shortly after that endorsement, New Castle Presbytery endorsed the Rev. Carl Mazza as the third candidate for moderator.  According to Friday’s Presbyterian News Service article, Rev. Mazza is the founder and leader of the organization Meeting Ground, described in the article as “a community-based ministry with the homeless and other marginalized people.”  The extent of the organization’s ministry is impressive, running two shelters, a transitional house, and a residential facility, as well as a winter homeless shelter ministry that combined provided over 21,000 bednights and 30,000 meals in 2007 according to the news story that cited the groups annual report.  In the web page about his endorsement on the Meeting Ground web site Rev. Mazza describes his ministry with this opening sentence: “The call of my life, and my reason for entering the ministry, is with and among persons who are experiencing homelessness or otherwise struggling to survive at the margins of our society.”  And in a Web 2.0 touch, there is an page about him and his moderatorial campaign on the New Castle Presbytery wiki.  This appears to be the same content as is on the Meeting Ground site.

In looking over these PNS articles again, I would note an interesting style difference in the news story about the Rev. Reyes-Chow.  While the other two contain embedded links to at least the endorsing presbytery, Rev. Reyes-Chow’s contains no embedded links at all.  A simple omission I am sure since I know from my writing this blog it is difficult to chase every possible link.

I would also note that we now have three Ministers of Word and Sacrament but no Elders endorsed for Moderator.  I have to wonder if the new biannual format of General Assembly has made it more difficult for an elder to take the time to serve as Moderator, but that is a topic I will delve into more in an upcoming Commentary.  Stay tuned.

Turning our attention to the business before the GA, the Business page is now up to thirty overtures, counting Overture 3 which was withdrawn.  Three of the seven new overtures address social witness policy.  Overture 24 is from Heartland Presbytery and is titled “On Reinstating the Office of Environmental Justice as an Integral Part of the Mission of the Church.”  Unfortunately, the link from the official business page is broken and the minutes from the presbytery meeting where it was passed no longer seem to be posted, but there appears to be a copy in Word format on the web site of Presbyterians for Restoring Creation. (Isn’t Google wonderful.)  The title of the overture is pretty much the action item in the overture and the rest of the text is reference to past GA statements and actions.

Overture 25, from the Presbytery of Lake Huron, calls for the PC(USA) to encourage and advocate for assistance to, and resettlement of, Iraqi refugees, and particularly for action from the U.S. government towards those ends.  And the Presbytery of Chicago has overtured GA ( Overture 26) “On Pursuing a Culture of a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.”  This overture calls for internationally recognized human rights in Israel and Palestine, denominational advocacy with the U.S. government to work towards that goal in the Middle East, and for PC(USA) groups to study the situation there.

Along other lines, Overture 27, from the Presbytery of Central Nebraska, would have the Board of Pensions of the PC(USA) “Expand the Definition of Medical Necessity to Include Habilitative Services for Children with Congenital Developmental Disabilities.”  This expanded definition would then have the Board of Pensions medical plan covering speech, physical and occupational therapy for children with conditions such as Downs Syndrome and Autism.  At the present time the medical plan only covers “restorative” therapy to recover from accident or illness and the overture rational cites studies to show that the additional cost would be very minimal.

Reading through Overture 30, this sounds like a “ Blood on Every Page” development where the overture was occasioned by specific financial irregularities in a church in the Presbytery of the Pacific, the originating presbytery.  The overture requests changes to the Form of Government and the Rules of Discipline to tighten up financial practices in churches.  These new rules include not having any pastors serve as a corporate officer, making sure the annual financial review is done by two unrelated persons, and making changes to accounts an act of the session and recorded in the minutes.  Reading through the proposed changes it is possible to put together a specific scenario that led to this overture.  F
inally, the Discipline change would make the three-year limit on disciplinary action for financial misconduct start at the time the misconduct was discovered.

And the “Reverse the PUP” overture in this batch is Overture 28 from the Presbytery of Central Washington which basically does what the title says: “On Requesting That All Actions of the 217th General Assembly (2006) Related to the Report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity Be Fully Rescinded.”

I have saved Overture 29 for last because it hinges on a polity subtlety that a GA Junkie would appreciate.  This overture, titled “On Amending G-5.0200 to Add the Vows of Membership to the Book of Order,” from the Presbytery of Mission, is motivated by the fact that members of a congregation are received by the Session unlike elders and deacons who are elected by the congregation and ordained and installed in public worship.  At the present time the membership “vows,” actually statements from which worship books have provided specific vows, are contained in the Directory for Worship (W-4.2003) right along with the ordination vows (W-4.4003).  But this sets up an interesting paradox – the session receives the new members but they declare their faith, take their vows if you will, before the full congregation.  This overture would add the specific vow language to the Form of Government section of the Book of Order (G-5.0200) so that the vows are taken before the Session at the time of reception into membership.  There appears to be nothing in the overture to remove it from the Directory for Worship so it would seem that new members would declare their faith twice in the membership process.

Finally, I wanted to mention that there is at least one name floating around as an applicant for the position of Stated Clerk of the General Assembly.  Toby Brown on his blog Classical Presbyterian mentions in one of his posts that the Rev. Ed Koster, currently the Stated Clerk of Detroit Presbytery, has his name in the pot.  Toby gives no source so it may be personal contact, and I have found no other mention of his name, or any other names, elsewhere in connection with the Clerk job.